Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Well I promised some pics and information on my youngest daughter's middle school 24 hour challenge. Our 6th, 7th and 8th grade holds a 24 hour challenge each fall where the kids run 1 mile about every 2 hours for a total of 10 miles over a 24 hour period. It is a huge event. And at any point in time there is some team running.

This is Emily's last year as she is in 8th grade and had a good time. It is an amazing event. I think the parent's get into it just as much as the kids!

You have a tent city for the girls and a tent city for the boys, with fire pits inbetween. The kids are required to stay on the track or in the tent areas - if they leave they get kicked out and sent home. And between 2:00am and 4:00am they are required to stay in their tent. (As a mom - wow, 2 full hours of required tent time to sleep - like that happens!)

This year Emily volunteered an old tent we had, so Thursday night I had to go to the field at school and put up the tent! Then Saturday morning take it all down! At least Emily is good at tents and helped a lot. The other girls she slept with wouldn't help at all - geez. Course part of the fun is all the food they eat! They have coolers outside each tent for drinks (kids bring their own) and then one parent got them Subway for lunch, and the school orders out pizza for all the kids Friday night. At 8:00pm I got a call - "Mom, can you bring us ice cream!" So at 8:30 I'm off to the ice cream shop where my middle daughter works to get blizzard type things for the girls! Saturday morning the parents cook pancakes and sausage for the kids. Oh and of course the kids bring all kinds of snacks and games for the tents!

Now this sounds not so bad until you realize how many kids there are! This year it was just under 300 kids! Talk about one big party! But they have this down to an exact science and it is unbelievable how smoothly it all runs and how well behaved the kids are. Everyone shows up at the track on time - there is no mingling in the tent areas between girls and boys (couse they can all hang out in the fire pit area together), and you wouldn't believe the number of parents that come to just sit around the fire pits all night long!

I think Emily had a great last year. But boy she slept most of the day on Saturday and went to bed at 8:00pm Sat night! I don't know when the last time was she went to bed that early willingly!